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"9" has all the trappings of a Tim Burton masterpiece -- including an intriguing, slightly disturbing premise that has the potential to break new ground -- but producer Burton was involved in neither the directing nor the writing of this movie, and it shows. Although "9" is beautiful, it is burdened with a poorly constructed plot that turns what could have been a great movie into 79 long minutes of boredom.
Based off a student film by director Shane Acker, the movie stars a rag doll named 9 (Elijah Wood) who wakes up after the end of the world. He and other numbered rag dolls he meets must journey through their world, trying to survive despite monstrous robots that shoot them with lasers.
It seems odd to call a movie about the post-apocalypse gorgeous, but the term fits. "9" plays up the perspective of the rag dolls as much as it can, highlighting their small size in relation to the dead world. Ordinary objects take on new significance as they loom across the screen. Almost every scene in the movie makes one think of the world in a different way. The film immediately places the audience in a fully realized and wondrous vision.
It seems impossible that something with such vivid animation could bore viewers. However, "9" fills most of its limited run-time with a story that seems unaware that it features every single fantasy cliché ever written. Watching the train-wreck of a plot unfold in such a compelling universe is like watching "9" shoot itself in the foot with a bazooka.
Even with its failings, the plot might have been able to redeem itself with interesting characters and even a shred of passable dialogue. Unfortunately, it fails on both counts. 1 (Christopher Plummer) whines on about the young up-start 9 making trouble. "We have rules!" he bleats for the umpteenth time, as though the writer just started copy-and-pasting dialogue willy-nilly when deadlines loomed.
On an even more painful note, the movie clumsily tries to force a relationship between 9 and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), two characters with all the romantic chemistry of a hideously awkward blind date. To be fair, all relationships in "9" are just as contrived. 5 (John C. Reilly) is the cowardly but reliable side-kick character, and in each of his lines he seems to shout either "I'm a loveable coward!" or "I am reliable yes-man to 9!" (sometimes in those exact words) with various levels of intensity.
The villainous robots are far more likeable than the rag doll heroes -- at least the robots have the class to steer clear of terrible attempts at characterization in favor of staying silent and looking cool. And listening to the rag dolls, the robots' Destroy All Humans motivation seems positively complex and nuanced.
All of this would be far less painful if "9" could simply be dismissed as mediocre. Yet when the characters stop spewing dialogue and are allowed to breathe in the world, scenes begin to work because they feel genuine and unforced. In one scene, a rag doll uses a magnet as a drug, sitting on a giant, broken hand in a courtyard of shattered statues; in another, a group of rag dolls scramble over giant piles of books, littered with artifacts of the dead. Scenes such as this give a sense of the interesting stories the movie could have told.
But whenever one tries to enjoy the movie for its good qualities, the plot -- relentless, scripted and boring -- whisks away any enjoyment and leaves the audience to the kind of storytelling that gives fantasy a bad reputation. That is what is so frustrating about watching "9": it could have been unbelievably good, but never took the risks it needed to take.
"We had such potential, such promise," the narrator says at the start of the movie, and he unwittingly reviews the film in its first lines. The film certainly had the potential to be a brilliant addition to fantasy cinema, reinventing the post-apocalyptic genre as we know it. Sadly, "9," like the dead civilization it beautifully depicts, will be relegated to the garbage heaps of the world.
